Far Rockaway: City, Sea and Wilderness

“There swept out of the sea a song” is a line from a poem by Carl Sandburg about Far Rockaway, Queens. In Rob Stephenson’s photo series of the same name, Rockaway is also sea-swept: a land of trees and tarps rearranged by the wind, buildings shrouded in fog, boats lying on their side by the side of the road.

Mr. Stephenson, 42, is often asked if he took these photos after Hurricane Sandy, when in 2012 the ocean surged into Rockaway, shredding miles of boardwalk and flooding the streets with sand. “The ruggedness wasn’t the result of Sandy,” said Mr. Stephenson, who took the bulk of the photographs before the hurricane, from 2007 to 2012. “It’s not a pristine environment.”

He continued: “It’s not wilderness, but it’s not urban. It’s like the city with wilderness poking in, and wilderness with something urban poking in.” This juxtaposition takes various forms, from boats and old cars in the brambles, to a length of police tape twisting over the sand near the boardwalk.

The people of Rockaway and their lives are suggested, not documented, by these abandoned objects — particularly the boats. “There are just kind of these old, obviously not-seaworthy boats,” Mr. Stephenson said. “It’s not easy to dispose of a boat, so people just kind of put them wherever.”

The mood, meanwhile, is the photographer’s. “It’s not a strict document, but my picture of Rockaway, and how it makes me feel,” he said. “When I go out there, I feel a little off-kilter, and I’m trying to capture a little of that in the pictures.”

The palette is milky. “It’s definitely because of the sea air,” the photographer said. “The quality of the light, it’s a soft kind of muted light. That’s how I feel it.”